Sunday, November 28, 2010

BOOK: MYSTERIES OF THE DIOGENES CLUB BY KIM NEWMAN

Coming from MonkeyBrain Books in December is the third volume of Kim Newman's wonderful Diogenes Club stories. In his seminal vampire epic ANNO DRACULA, Kim Newman reinvented the Diogenes Club similarly to how it was presented in Billy Wilder’s The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, which is to say as a top-secret government organization involved with strange doings. In essence a sort of X-Files outfit, founded by Mycroft Holmes, keeping England’s shores safe from supernatural, psychic and alien oddities over the last 100 years or so.

From the 1860s to the present day, these are the accounts of the Diogenes Club, whose agents solve crimes too strange for Britain's police, protecting the realm-and this entire plane of existence-from occult menaces, threats born in other dimensions, magical perfidy and the Deep Dark Deadly Ones. Kim Newman continues the series began in The Man From the Diogenes Club, revealing more mysteries of the British Empire's most secret service.

It is 1888 and Queen Victoria has remarried, taking as her new consort Vlad Tepes, the Wallachian Prince infamously known as Count Dracula. Peppered with familiar characters from Victorian history and fiction, the novel tells the story of vampire Geneviève Dieudonné and Charles Beauregard of the Diogenes Club as they strive to solve the mystery of the Ripper murders.

Anno Dracula is a rich and panoramic tale, combining horror, politics, mystery and romance to create a unique and compelling alternate history. Acclaimed novelist Kim Newman explores the darkest depths of a reinvented Victorian London.

This brand-new edition of the bestselling novel contains unique bonus material, including a new afterword from Kim Newman, annotations, articles and alternate endings to the original novel.